Adelaide indie-folk sextet, The Winter Gypsy released their new single ‘Bojke’ [pron. boy-ke] in June – a dreamy ode to a dearly departed family dog of the same name.
The single comes as the follow-up to their 2016 debut EP ‘Page I’. Vocalist for The Winter Gypsy, Tushir Singh explains how the song came to be about Bojke – who belonged to bassist Isaac Kerr and his brother Ollie. “I’d written it a few weeks prior to Bojke passing away,” Tush says.
“I just wrote it in a narrative sense and it was based on the mood of the day, which was a rainy day. I told the boys about it and they really liked it, then a few weeks later Bojke passed away.
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“It was so strange because words of the lyrics were so relevant to the situation. I thought it was the perfect thing to name it after Bojke. I asked our bassist Isaac and his brother Ollie if I could use the name Bojke for the song and they loved it. That’s how it all came about really.”
Since releasing ‘Page I’, Tush says the band have been working on developing their sound with a focus on the dreamy quality and melancholy timbre of the latest single. “It’s one of the best tracks we’ve put out, this recent one,” he says.
“'Page I’ was more or less all these old songs I had written back in 2012 that we finally recorded last year and put out. It was one of those things where we were just happy to get it all recorded, get it out there and push on to new things.
“So this one is a bit more of a new sound for us; it’s still relative to The Winter Gypsy sound, but as a band we’re trying to fine-tune what we want to sound like and I think this is a direction that we’d like to take, on the mellow side of music.
“We do have very upbeat songs as well, but ‘Bojke’ is definitely one of our melancholy slow ones which is nice. I live for this sort of sound; I really love the melancholy, really dreamy sound. I’ve always been a sucker for it. With all the upbeat stuff we write, my favourite is definitely this type of stuff.”
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The new single is accompanied by a haunting video shot by Gerard Wood and harbours a similar visual aesthetic to the video for their ‘Took Me By’ single.
To celebrate the launch of the single, The Winter Gypsy are playing a short east-coast tour and Tush says he and the band can’t wait to get back on the road. “We’re very much involved in a big, loud live show,” he says.
“We like to keep it upbeat and have some fun with our live set, but we also love instrumentals, jamming onstage and getting people to vibe on it that way. Having six members in the band, it’s easy to have good jams onstage.”
The Winter Gypsy Shows
Fri 23 Jun - The World Bar (Sydney)Fri 7 Jul - The Grace Darling (Melbourne)
Sat 8 Jul - The Exeter Hotel (Adelaide)
